"I drive a Dodge Stratus!"
Cold Open: Self Defense Test
4 Stars
Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski gets a psych evaluation
Ted Kaczynski, better known as The Unabomber, wants to act as his own attorney so he needs to take a psychiatric exam.
"I hope the first question isn't did you ever try to kill yourself with your own pair of underwear, because I have."
He displays his law degree, which is a place mat from Denny's with "I'm a lawyer" written on it, and looks at an inkblot and sees Anwar Sadat wearing lingerie. He requests some legal pads, a really hot secretary and a lot of meatloaf and reminisces about the old days when he had it all, a shack, a bucket, that's about all he had but he was on top of the world. I've always loved Ferrell's take on Kaczynski as a chipper and friendly man who is happy to tell you all about his manifesto.
Sarah Michelle Gellar Monologue
Ted Kaczynski, better known as The Unabomber, wants to act as his own attorney so he needs to take a psychiatric exam.
"I hope the first question isn't did you ever try to kill yourself with your own pair of underwear, because I have."
He displays his law degree, which is a place mat from Denny's with "I'm a lawyer" written on it, and looks at an inkblot and sees Anwar Sadat wearing lingerie. He requests some legal pads, a really hot secretary and a lot of meatloaf and reminisces about the old days when he had it all, a shack, a bucket, that's about all he had but he was on top of the world. I've always loved Ferrell's take on Kaczynski as a chipper and friendly man who is happy to tell you all about his manifesto.
Sarah Michelle Gellar Monologue
5 Stars
Gellar gets lavish gifts from the cast
Sarah says that she has been having a great time all week and the cast has gone out of their way to be nice to her. Cheri comes out to present her with a cashmere sweater. Sarah is grateful but doesn't have a gift in return so gives her the earrings she's wearing.
"They have a pair just like these in wardrobe."
Norm comes out smoking a cigarette to thunderous applause, which he milks for all it's worth, he eventually quiets the audience down by saying, "I gotta do this skit now". Clearly after the couple of weeks he's had he has run out of fucks to give. He presents Sarah with a silver trophy that says 'Best SNL Ever' she returns the gesture by telling him that she made a donation to charity in his name. He breaks the fourth wall again and waves goodbye to the crowd. Darrell has compiled 70 generations of Sarah's family history in a book which prompts Sarah to steal an audience member's purse and give him the large bag of marijuana inside. Tim has a cooler with his kidney inside, just in case she ever needs an extra one. A cute, fun and simple concept for a monologue that gave us a Norm sighting. The look on Sarah's face when she discovers the pot was very good.
An Important Message About Smallpox
Sarah says that she has been having a great time all week and the cast has gone out of their way to be nice to her. Cheri comes out to present her with a cashmere sweater. Sarah is grateful but doesn't have a gift in return so gives her the earrings she's wearing.
"They have a pair just like these in wardrobe."
Norm comes out smoking a cigarette to thunderous applause, which he milks for all it's worth, he eventually quiets the audience down by saying, "I gotta do this skit now". Clearly after the couple of weeks he's had he has run out of fucks to give. He presents Sarah with a silver trophy that says 'Best SNL Ever' she returns the gesture by telling him that she made a donation to charity in his name. He breaks the fourth wall again and waves goodbye to the crowd. Darrell has compiled 70 generations of Sarah's family history in a book which prompts Sarah to steal an audience member's purse and give him the large bag of marijuana inside. Tim has a cooler with his kidney inside, just in case she ever needs an extra one. A cute, fun and simple concept for a monologue that gave us a Norm sighting. The look on Sarah's face when she discovers the pot was very good.
An Important Message About Smallpox
1 Star
The Spice Girls don't want you to get smallpox
Sarah, the female cast and Chris Kattan play The Spice Girls. They bounce around and say things about girl power and warn us not to get smallpox. Instead, you should go see their new movie. I did not understand what the joke was here. I guess it's just The Spice Girls are dumb and annoying. Darkening Kattan's skin to play Scary Spice seemed unnecessary, were Tim and Tracy busy?
The View
2 Stars
The ladies of The View welcome Glenn Close to their show
We get the same intro as last time except Claire Danes is replaced with Gellar as Debbie Matenopoulos. They discuss the Paula Jones case and human cloning and it's basically a carbon copy of the previous incarnation. Meredith Viera talks about her kids, Star Jones says 'allegedly' in every sentence and mentions that she's a lawyer, Barbara Walters drops names and Debbie is dumb. They bring out Glenn Close as their guest who gets asked dumb questions. I guess if you missed it the first time you might enjoy it. I suppose it made sense to do this kind of stuff before DVRs and YouTube but it just feels lazy. I mean, this was literally the exact same sketch just with different topics and a different guest.
Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus
4 Stars
Author, John Gray describes the differences between men and women
Norm as John Gray, author of the book 'Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus' explains that women talk to discuss feelings and men talk to convey information. He is slightly effeminate and seems to nothing about how men really act. Men like their football and changing the oil under the bonnet of their cars and sawing big 2x4s and making big moose heads. Women like pretty things like beautiful floral arrangements and Queen Anne's lace while men just want a cup of beer. Sarah and Will are a married couple who read John's book and describe what they have learned, basically that men need their football and their wood. It's good to see Norm back after last week.
An Important Message About Rheumatoid Arthritis
1 Star
The Spice Girls don't want you to get rheumatoid arthritis
Oh, good. I didn't get it the first time so they just repeat it again with a different disease. They bounce around and tell you not to get rheumatoid arthritis and instead to go see their new movie. I'm not kidding, it's almost the exact same sketch. The ending voice-over even says smallpox. They just re-used the audio clip from the first one even though it was a different disease.
Family Dinner
4 Stars
An awkward family dinner gets interrupted by screaming matches
Will, Ana and Sarah are sitting done to dinner. They make small talk in between uncomfortable silences and the sounds of their forks and knives scraping plates. Will's story about misplacing his keys at work slowly turns into a screaming match between the three which deescalates instantly and goes back to an uncomfortable silence. This repeats a couple times heightening every time with the absurdity of Will's shouted lines, "People are scared of me", "I drive a Dodge Stratus", "I can do 100 push-ups in 20 minutes". This one is all about the performances and I've mentioned this before in other reviews but I don't think the current cast could pull something like this off. There's too much laughing and breaking nowadays. If one person cracked a smile in this sketch it would completely ruin everything. The humor comes from how serious they are taking this and the awkward silent moments.
Road To Nagano
3 Stars
Tara Lipinski gets interviewed before her Olympics tryout
Will and Darrell are reporting on Olympic figure skating. They show footage of Michelle Kwan skating, Chris Kattan comes out as Olympic gymnast, Kerri Strug, then Sarah comes out as Tara Lipinski. She's smoking a cigarette and talking with a hard edge. I guess she fell during one of her qualifying routines and is now pissed off. After she leaves we cut to a pre-filmed bit of her on the ice. She skates to 'Bad To The Bone', flashes her butt, drinks a beer and flips the bird. I'm guessing there was some context to this that I am missing 20 years later. There was a little too much going on here but it was fine. They should have cut out all the preamble of Michelle Kwan and Terri Strug and just started with the Lipinski interview.
The Golords
4 Stars
The Golords rescue The Super Bowl from Saddam Hussein
The Olsen twins are entertaining the crowd during the Super Bowl half-time show when the Golords notice Saddam Hussein riding a blimp and holding a bag of anthrax. Mike assembles his Go-Copter while Sissy causes a distraction in her swimsuit, because as Mike puts it "All Persian men lust for superior American women". It works as Saddam turns into a cartoon wolf when he sees Sissy posing on a motorcycle. Mike flies up and melts Saddam's face off with a blowtorch and throws the anthrax in a nearby river where it won't harm anyone.
Goth Talk
3 Stars
The goths welcome a guest to their show, a former classmate
Molly and Chris are in goth makeup hosting their public access show from the den. They have to be quiet because Chris's brother is passed out behind the couch. Their guest today is the host of another goth themed public access show who also used to live in their town before her parents had to move to Orlando, played by Sarah. The three argue over which town is more sinister, Orlando or Tampa. Things get heated and Molly ends up embarrassing Sarah by playing a clip of her at their school's talent show lip-syncing to Ace Of Base. Exposed as a poser, she leaves in tears. Sarah added a charm to this usually lifeless sketch but it's still just a suckier version of Wayne's World.
Weekend Update
"Act-y. No more direct-y. No more write-y. No more produce-y."
OK, second week of Colin Quinn. Trying to keep an open mind. This was a step down from last week. There's just something about his delivery that bugs me. He also doesn't have as many jokes as he does rants about things that are bothering him. Like when he talks about The Spice Girls on David Letterman. He noticed that they had back up singers and points out that the band is 5 girls who don't have instruments and they need back up singers? That's the punchline. Colin thinks The Spice Girls suck. I wonder if they told Norm he wasn't allowed to do desk pieces on Update either. Like, could they just throw to him as a correspondent? That probably would have been a dick move on his part. I'm sure he was friends with Colin and having the two of them in the same segment would have really shown how lame Quinn was. Here's a joke, the inventor of bubble gum died, his body was found under a movie seat. Hilarious, right? Colin ends with "That's the story I'm going with".
I guess the rumors that Norm was fired because of his O.J. jokes weren't true because Tim shows up as O.J. Simpson and basically just says he's a murderer. Maybe this was Tim showing Norm some solidarity. O.J. is here to talk about The Unabomber. He theorizes that if Ted Kaczynski did send bombs through the mail it could only be because he loved those people too much. He has the same theory about the Oklahoma City bombers, they just loved that building too much. Much like the iceberg loved the Titanic, the Ebola virus loves human flesh and the United States loved Hiroshima. That last one has never been proven though and O.J. swears he will not rest until he finds the real bombers behind Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Portishead
Portishead
I was expecting something else. I'm not sure what, but it wasn't this. I'm not sure how to describe this song. It's like the music you would hear if you were walking down a weird hallway in a David Lynch movie. A DJ scratches records that are playing samples as a woman who kind of sounds like Bjork sings in a microphone with an echo effect. It was 4 minutes that felt like an eternity.
The Robin Byrd Show
1 Star
Robin Byrd welcomes two strippers to her talk show
I liked this slightly better than the last time I saw it but still hated it. Cheri plays Robin Byrd, a porn star with big fake boobs who seems to black out during her introduction of guests and urges her audience to put on their condoms. Her first guest is Tim who does a goofy dance in his underwear and talks about the porno films he's starred in. Then Sarah comes out as another stripper/porn star who brags about doing 400 adult films in 4 months. Finally Ana comes out as another exotic dancer but when she rips off her clothes she is wearing a dress that says "Stop Porn Now". Only laugh I got from this was when Sarah danced to Candle In The Wind and Tim called it a moving tribute to Princess Diana.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
1 Star
Buffy gets a new look now that it's on opposite Seinfeld
So, I guess Buffy The Vampire Slayer moved to Thursday nights opposite Seinfeld so to compete Buffy changed formats and is now Seinfeld with vampires. This was lame. This was one of those sketches that seemed like a parody of an SNL sketch. What is the cast of Seinfeld were vampires? It might go a little something like this.... Jerry and George talk about a girl with a weird fang and debate the economics of showering while in the form of a bat. Kramer comes in with an idea to make his apartment one big coffin. Elaine comes in and complains about a new co-worker who makes slurping sounds when he sucks blood.
Tiger Beat's Ultra Super Duper Dreamy Love Show
3 Stars
Teenage girls host a show about cute boys
Sarah, Cheri, Molly and Ana are all teenage girls hosting a show about the dreamiest of dreamboats. They gush over Hanson, Ethan Hawke, Brian Austin Green and Leonardo DiCaprio. They introduce us to the dreamy boy of the future, Kevin Thomas Martin, a baby who recently had a spot on ER. The sketch was fine but forgettable until Norm comes out as the director of a TV movie starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas. He plays the character like an old Jewish comedian and talks about how difficult it was to work with someone so hunky.
"He was the dreamiest boy I ever directed. It drove me crazy. Everyday I would go home and dream he would ask me to marry him, but he never did."
His mustache falls off during this and Norm tells everyone that it is fake. He says he bought it off a fella on the street who assured him it would not fall off. There are definite real world problematic issues with this sketch. The fact that young actors are routinely taken advantage of sexually by older men. But if you remove that from your mind, and the fact that Norm plays his character like a sweet lovelorn old man instead of a sexual predator, then the sketch works. The thought of teenage girls and older men lusting over the same boys is creepy but they rightfully avoid the more tasteless aspects of the idea.
We end with The Lost Deep Thoughts that tells us one of the worst things you can do as an actor is forget your lines and then get so flustered you start stabbing the other actors.
FINAL ANALYSIS
"He was the dreamiest boy I ever directed. It drove me crazy. Everyday I would go home and dream he would ask me to marry him, but he never did."
His mustache falls off during this and Norm tells everyone that it is fake. He says he bought it off a fella on the street who assured him it would not fall off. There are definite real world problematic issues with this sketch. The fact that young actors are routinely taken advantage of sexually by older men. But if you remove that from your mind, and the fact that Norm plays his character like a sweet lovelorn old man instead of a sexual predator, then the sketch works. The thought of teenage girls and older men lusting over the same boys is creepy but they rightfully avoid the more tasteless aspects of the idea.
We end with The Lost Deep Thoughts that tells us one of the worst things you can do as an actor is forget your lines and then get so flustered you start stabbing the other actors.
FINAL ANALYSIS
"Don't get smallpox, get girl power"
Average
Average
2.7 Stars
MVP
Will Ferrell
Self Defense Test, Men Are From Mars Women Are From Venus, Family Dinner, Road To Nagano, The Golords, Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Self Defense Test, Men Are From Mars Women Are From Venus, Family Dinner, Road To Nagano, The Golords, Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Best Sketch
Men Are From Mars Women Are From Venus
Worst Sketch
The Robin Byrd Show
How I Would Have Lorne Michaels-ed It
Just get rid of whatever that Spice Girls thing was and Buffy The Vampire Slayer and you got a pretty good show from beginning to end. I recalculated the show's average without them and it would have moved up to a 3.3. Thankfully they were short which can't be said for The Robin Byrd Show. So, quick fix for this episode, cut all the crappy stuff. Aside from those 4 sketches, this was a good one.
Host Analysis
Sarah Michelle Gellar has definitely been the biggest surprise of the season, so far. I thought she was delightful in every sketch, even the bad ones. She had a great energy, seemed to want to be there and committed to all her characters. Plus she was funny and when she didn't have the best material she was at least charming. She was the only saving grace of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer sketch, her Buffy/Elaine hybrid was a good impression and brought life to a crappy idea. She even brought life to Goth Talk, a sketch I usually loathe. She went on to host 2 more times and I enjoyed her so much in this outing that it made me want to cover those seasons next.
Final Thoughts
There were some low-lights but this was a solid outing from beginning to end. Those short crappy sketches brought the average down but this is an episode I will probably watch again after I'm done with this season. This all might be because I know Norm isn't gonna be around too much longer so it was nice that he got one last episode to shine a little bit.
Up Next
John Goodman hosts with special guest Dan Aykroyd as they were promoting the ill fated sequel Blues Brothers 2000.
Can't imagine someone like Pete Davidson or Leslie Jones not breaking in the dinner sketch.
ReplyDeletePretty great episode though. She added to every sketch she was in. Remember her second hosting stint as being a bit more rockier though it was probably the writing. Will re watch soon and see.
Also wished Portishead had played something like Sour Times. Not a huge fan of theirs but that's my favourite song of there's